Overview - IBM i File System Agent

The IBM i File System Agent provides unified protection and recovery for the file system data, applications, and databases on IBM i File System Agent clients using an access node. You can also configure the MediaAgent and access node on the same computer.

In addition to complete protection of the file system data for disaster recovery, it also provides more granular backup and recovery options to individually back up applications, databases, libraries, and objects on the IBM i machine. Added options for deduplication, job management and reporting help ensure that all your file system data is traceable and retrievable whenever the need arises.

Simplified Data Management

The IBM i File System Agent provides easy management of all the file system data on IBM i File System Agent clients in your environment, by providing a singular approach to manage the data using the same unified console and infrastructure.

Security

As all the data protection and recovery requests to the IBM i File System Agent client pass through the access node, security for data present on the IBM i File System Agent clients is ensured.

Point-in-Time Recovery

In the event of a serious system failure, such as the breakdown of hardware, software, or operating systems, the IBM i File System Agent provides point-in-time recovery of files at any given time.

Backup and Recovery Failovers

In the event that a MediaAgent used for the backup or recovery operation fails, it is automatically resumed on alternate MediaAgents. In such cases, the backup or restore job will not restart from the beginning, but will resume from the point of failure. This is especially useful for backups and restores of large amount of file system data.

In the event, that a network goes down between the access node and the MediaAgent, the backup and recovery jobs are resumed on alternate data paths. Similarly, in the event of a device failure, the jobs are automatically switched to alternate disk and tape drives.

Efficient Job Management

You can view and verify the status of backup and recovery operations from the Job Controller and the Event Viewer within the CommCell Console. You can also track the status of the jobs using Reports, which can be saved and distributed. Generate reports for different aspects of data management. Customize the reports to display only the required data and save them to a specific location in different formats. For example, you can create a backup job summary report to view the completed backup jobs.

You can schedule, generate and send the Reports via email without user intervention.

For more information on different types of reports, see Reports Overview.

Block-Level Deduplication

Deduplication provides a smarter way of storing data by identifying and eliminating the duplicate items in a data protection operation. During IBM i File System Agent backups, data is transferred from the IBM i File System Agent client to the access node where deduplication comparison is performed.

Deduplication at the data block level compares blocks of data against each other. If an object (file, database) contains blocks of data that are identical to each other, then block level deduplication eliminates storing the redundant data and reduces the size of the object in storage. This way dramatically reduces the backup data copies on both the disk and tapes.

Terminology

The IBM i File System Agent File System documentation uses the following terminology: